CEMETERY JUNCTION
UK, 2010, 95 minutes, Colour.
Christian Cooke, Tom Hughes, Jack Doolan, Felicity Jones, Ralph Fiennes, Emily Watson, Matthew Goode, Ricky Gervaise, Julia Davis, Steve Speirs, Anne Reid.
Directed by Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant.
Ricky Gervais and his comic style are an acquired taste – and many audiences of the television programs, The Office (UK version) and Extras, have acquired it. He usually does obnoxious deadpan (the Museum director in the Night at the Museum films) but did dentist-victim-ghost nicely in Ghost Town. He tried more variety in The Invention of Lying. While he does have a smaller role in Cemetery Junction, he and writing partner, Stephen Merchant, have something more ambitious in mind here. It is a visit to the working class Britain of the 1970s, the narrow outlooks of populations stuck in towns where their families have always been, which expresses itself in bigoted and racist comments as well as disbelief that anybody in the family would want to get out of there.
It is a film of episodes more than a developing narrative, although the central young characters do move emotionally and decisively in their lives. Of course, it is a somewhat dangerous ploy to characterise a culture and a community with a type, but it can be a useful generalisation to highlight particular features of the culture and explore how different characters are shaped by them, either accepting them or rebelling against them.
It is possible to do this for the town of Cemetery Junction (near Reading) in 1973. Gervais himself was born in Reading in June 1961, so he was a little younger than the central characters he writes about. Stephen Merchant, however, was born in Bristol in 1974.
Cemetery Junction as a town? And its population? Despite the changes of the 1960s, Cemetery Junction does not seem to have changed much in essence (although there are clubs, music and more permissive sex). The culture can still be described as combinations of sensing and thinking (though with some of the narrow observations made by the Taylor family, ‘thinking’ is a kind of euphemism). It is a conformist culture. The strengths are in reliability and preserving the best of the British traditions. The weaknesses, from an inability to exercise much Intuition, consist of narrow-mindedness, fixed ideas and wariness of change, xenophobia, smothering initiatives and discounting possibilities.
This is definitely the case with the adults. The Taylor family, anchored in work at a local factory, are mouthpieces for the bigotry. Ralph Fiennes (after chewing the scenery and more as Hades in Clash of the Titans and then doing the most impassive, stiff upper lip military office in Nanny McPhee? and the Big Bang) is excellent as the self-absorbed, self-made chauvinist insurance manager who has imposed his rigid routine on his wife, Emily Watson also excellent, and has dominated and ignored her into submission. Matthew Goode is persuasively and unscrupulously go-getting as an imitator of his boss and engaged to the boss's vivacious daughter, Julie (Felicity Jones), who could be in danger of eventually becoming a replica of her repressed mother. Julie finally asks her mother when her father last thanked her for getting the cups of tea he frequently and absent-mindedly demands, she replies, ‘1964’. This may seem something of a caricature, but it also seems quite real.
It is with the younger generation that there is critique and the possibilities of broadening the culture – or of leaving it behind.
Freddy Taylor (Christian Cooke) goes for an interview for a job in the insurance company, kow-towing to the manager (Fiennes) and his on-the-rise salesman (Goode). While he does get the job, he has to put up with the taunts of his friends, their antics and family criticism (Gervais plays his factory-working dad). When Freddy attends the company’s monthly dinner at which an old employee retires and is ‘honoured’ with a crystal vase and a peremptory speech of thanks, Freddy’s concerns increase because he has not been successful in his early bids for selling policies.
He meets a school friend, Julie, the boss’s daughter, who is engaged to his assistant but is more than restless and talks about leaving, about developing a career in photography, in travelling. She puts it to Freddy who, being caught in the narrow cultural outlook, is more hesitant to follow what he knows to be right for him, to leave. This is complicated because of his relationship to his friends who are really stuck in their lives.
Freddy’s best friend, Bruce (Tom Hughes), works at the factory and goes home to his alcoholic father whose wife left them long since. He despises his father, suppresses his rage until he lashes out violently and finds himself in jail. Snork (Jack Doolan) is the local dork with self-designed inane tattoos on back and front and who puts his foot in it as soon as he opens his mouth. Local dead-endism looms for Bruce and Snork. One catalyst for seeing things differently is the local policeman who keeps arresting Bruce and tries to keep Freddy and Snork out of trouble because of their pranks and brawls. He has lived in the town a long time, but he has enough empathy with people to know that their lives could be better. His telling Bruce about his father being a good man before his wife left and he took refuge in drink shows how compassion can change lives.
When the film opens, and we either laugh at the lads or are irritated by them, it may seem that the film is not going to go too far either. But, it grows on you, and the range of characters is well observed and written. The sequences towards the end when both Bruce and Snork, despite Freddy’s urgings, realise and decide that they are going to stay have some moving moments. Even Julie finally seems to lack the courage to break free. It is her mother who urges her to go, not to be trapped as she has been.
The film is not presented as exact realism. The characters are just that bit caricatured, the situations heightened. However, with the sharp dialogue (particularly from a shrewish, obliviously bigoted Anne Reid as Freddy's grandmother) and some emotional interactions, especially from the policeman who defends Bruce's father and tries to knock some sense into Bruce, there is a sufficient sense of realism below the surface. Cultures can have a generic type which confines some who identify with it so that they cannot develop or change – but which those of other types and temperaments need to challenge or oppose in order to be themselves – to go beyond simply acceptance.
And the relevance? Although the story and characters are from another time, almost four decades ago, each generation has to face the same issues but in their own time and place.
Gervais fans should not be expecting a funny comedy but, rather, a wry serious comedy with some funny and some wise moments.
1. A serious comedy? A memoir of the 1970s?
2. The work of Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant, their television shows, their films?
3. The re-creation of the 1970s in Reading, nostalgia or not? The United Kingdom and the times? The town, its appearance, the clubs, the shops, insurance? Homes? The music of the times?
4. The title, the tone for the town – and everybody wanting to get out?
5. The location, the town, the factory, homes and offices, the different classes, the clubs and the hotels?
6. The musical score and the music of the times?
7. Freddie’s story, at home, his father working in the factory, his mother and her attitudes and expressing them, the racist attitudes, xenophobic, the grandmother and her unashamed declarations? His interview with Mr Kendrick, his flattering him? His talking of his aims, of overcoming difficulties, wealth? Mike Ramsay as his role model? His being employed, the reaction of his friends, their criticism? His accompanying Mike Ramsay on his rounds, the visit to the couple, saving their money for the holiday, Ramsay taking him aside, persuading them to invest, Freddie later visiting them – and the husband having died, the wife regretting not having the holiday?
8. Bruce’s story, work in the factory, his clashes with his father, the mother leaving the family when he was young, the father and his drinking? Bruce as angry, surly at home, prone to violence outside, getting into scrapes?
9. Snork, his appearance, working at the railway? Awkward with women? Saying crass things without realising it? The three friends, their time together, the various pranks? The bonds between them, the police and Sergeant Davies and his help, getting them out of trouble? The warnings?
10. Freddie and his meeting Julie, the memories of the past, Mr Kendrick’s daughter, engaged to Mike Ramsay? Her wanting to be a photographer, her plans? Yet the way she was treated at home? Her mother, downtrodden and silent, the pattern for the future? Whether she would become like her mother with Mike Ramsay? The monthly dinner, the thank-you to the man retiring, the gift of the vase and Mr Kendrick’s question about whether it was crystal or glass? Mike Ramsay being the same as Kendrick? Freddie and his observations at the dinner, his questioning whether he wanted to work in insurance? Julie and her dilemma, her wanting to travel, opening up Freddie’s horizons? Freddie going to Julie’s room, the discussion about leaving, her mother coming and urging her daughter to leave, hurrying to the train, Freddie in the train, getting out, yet their going off finally together?
11. Bruce, his violence, the bashing, going to jail, the police, Davies telling him the true story about his mother, about his father, his having to face the truth, going home, the ugly things he said about his father and his treatment of him, his reconciliation with his father, not leaving the town?
12. The group going to the diner, the owner and his egging Snork on, Snork and his crass expressions of himself, his tattoos and his own design? The girl attracted to him, his thinking her ugly? The final visit, her liking the tattoos, talking with him, his decision to stay?
13. Mr Kendrick as his character, hardened? The ungrateful treatment of his wife? Her silence yet her shrewdness? Support of her daughter, Freddie dancing with her? The possibility of change? Mike Ramsay and his being the Kendrick of the next generation?
14. The screenplay and its shrewd observation of characters, verbal wit, colloquial? A film of nostalgia and insight with light comedy?
